Short duration prompts (e.g., speech prompts) are generally short pieces of audio speech or audio-like instructions in a particular language such as English or another language that provides navigational, general, or warning messages from a vehicle information or entertainment system to a driver of a vehicle. In this case, a vehicle audio system may electrically playback the speech prompts. Since the primary role of the vehicle audio system is to playback entertainment media (or entertainment audio) from sources such as BLUETOOTH, radio or Universal Serial Bus (USB), the electrically generated speech prompts may be in direct electrical and acoustical conflict with audio from the various entertainment sources. The speech prompts are directed to the driver and are generally of no use to other passengers in the vehicle. Whereas the entertainment audio, for example, music, news, etc. is directed towards all occupants of the car. Thus, a compromise is necessary to ensure that the music (or other entertainment audio) that is being played for non-drivers through the speakers is not interrupted with the speech prompts in the vehicle while at the same time the speech prompts are properly audible to the driver.
The conflict between the audio from speech prompts and music sources may be resolved in different ways in different vehicle audio systems. One approach may involve reducing the level of the music (or entertainment audio) from all speakers while keeping the level of the speech prompts unaltered. This maintains the intelligibility of speech in the prompts. Another approach may require that the speech prompts are played back from selected speakers so that the remaining speakers play back music without any interruptions. In both cases, the passengers experience an interruption in the music listening experience.